Ready, Aim, Fire
by The Bruised Twilight
Summary: A widespread plague brings heartache and disaster to a group of teens. What's left of the teens anyway. In this fight to survive, they face their worst fears, their most horrific nightmares, deep emotional losses and hope. Will they cope? And if so, how will they make it through this nightmare? (Rating may change. OC included.)


Static appears on the screen of a camera before it begins to clear up and show the dirt-caked face of a female. Her hair was matted down and her clothes were worn from the seasons and trekking that she must have gone through.

She was in a worn and torn building with a few other living companions. Dried blood was sprayed across the wall, wallpaper was torn and there were holes that freckled the walls of the said building. If one were to judge this area by the looks of a blurred sign in the back, it was possible that this place might have been a sort of diner or a cafe.

There stood others in the background of the camera's point of view. They were all tired-looking and had stains of blood splattered on their clothes along with semi-dried mud. A few of the people behind her held up planks of wood and hammered them together, firmly planting them against the busted windows and half-hinged doors amongst the building they were in.

Ironically, the outside was bright with several small clouds that spread across the blue horizon. It seemed like mother nature was so innocent and happy, regardless of how the ones in the building looked and felt. Certainly a few in the group felt mocked if they had put this in mind.

The girl in the camera's foreground stared shallowly into the lens. Her green eyes were tired and half-lidded. This girl barely opened up her mouth to speak in a quiet voice.

"Ready, aim, fire.

Ready, time, swing.

Ready, fight, survive.

These are the most obvious things to keeping alive and carrying on. If you don't fight, you have no hope. There is no one there to lift you up because if you can't defend yourself, you can't defend those around you either. It doesn't matter how good-hearted or wholesome you are, if you are a handicap to the group then you can expect to be left behind.

Our group is small compared to how it used to be. Such a lively bunch is now a handful of a melancholy few."

"Wow, what a happy thought. That's just what we needed here." Commented one male that worked on blocking the windows. He wore a beanie and had shaggy brown hair that hung out of it and down to about his jawline, maybe a bit lower.

The girl looked towards him with a frown but she refrained from speaking to him and turned her gaze towards the camera again. She lifted up the camera, stood up, walked elsewhere in the diner and continued to quietly speak to whoever she hoped might watch the video sometime after she was done recording.

"My apologies for my companion... he's just been very bitter since this all started. My bringing up how our group used to be obviously didn't help him, so it's my fault on that part." She admitted while lowering her head.

"We have no idea what the date is. We're blind to everything but to surviving what's out there. I bet you might be wondering what this mysterious thing is. Simply put, it's a very dangerous plague. If you catch it, you're dead.

"But you don't stay that way." She said after taking a small break from speaking. "You come back. In a way, you could say that you're reborn but whoever comes back isn't you. It's someone else... some_thing_ else. You don't know who you are, where you are or what you're doing. You're now a beast that runs on hunger. You have no fear of anything. Killing and eating is all you know. You never sleep, you never get full, you almost never die unless you take a lethal blow to the head or more specifically, have your brain destroyed.

"Once you catch this disease, there's no way out. You get this disease through a bite, a scratch, blood in your eyes, nose or mouth... even if you die by natural causes, you still come back. As long as your brain is alive, so is the chance of you becoming one of those things.

"I bet whoever's watching this... _if anyone's watching this_, is wondering how this whole epidemic started. I can't exactly say how since I really have no idea, but I can tell you the history of our group and what we'd endured along the way, but I'll tell the story as long as you are willing to listen." She fell silent once more and stared at the camera for a while, as if she was expecting an answer before ultimately continuing to speak. "Then perhaps I shall tell you from the beginning."


End file.
